One way to look at digital marketing is by seeing your business as a central destination that anyone across the world has access to. But the customer journey is a long one full of roadblocks, distractions, detours, and beyond. 

Digital marketing is a crucial element in the success of businesses across all industries. The entire strategy made simple gives your business a strong digital presence across multiple platforms to…

• Reach consumers
• Build a positive brand image
• Increase revenue

These are your main goals measured and led by your digital marketing efforts. The problem here is that because most business owners are already wearing so many hats, they have little to no quality time to spend on their digital marketing strategies. Without up-to-date knowledge of best practices in the digital marketing realm, it’s even harder to know what to do next. 

Digital marketing agencies (like Exults) act as a top-notch travel guide for your business. We will make suggestions (social media posts, paid ads, sponsored landing website pages, etc.) as your target customers road trip or browse the Internet – leading them towards your business on their travels. Again, because most business owners are generally too busy, we give them the marketing services they need to establish and maintain a presence in the digital landscape.

Many digital marketing agencies make promises but fail to execute results. So how do you choose the best digital marketing agency for your business? Dive into the top 10 things to consider when hiring a digital marketing agency.

What To Look For In A Digital Marketing Agency

Want to know what to look for in a digital marketing agency? Questions on how to choose the right digital marketing agency and why hire a digital marketing agency? After working with hundreds of companies, we’ve learned a thing or two about what to look for in a digital marketing agency when hiring (and especially what to avoid). 

1) Determine Business Goals

Remember your simplified digital marketing strategy from above? The reasoning behind having a multilayered digital marketing approach is to support your ultimate goals. 

Whether you’re starting from scratch or power-boosting your digital marketing efforts, the first thing that you need to do is to evaluate your organization’s unique goals. Then you need to tie that to your digital needs to answer the question…What digital marketing services does your business need to reach its goals? 

Explore these sample business goals:

• Grow revenue
• Increase conversion rates
• Decrease bounce rates
• Expand lead generation pathways
• Improve brand image
• Boost brand awareness
• Reach a certain number of social media followers

Keep in mind that narrowing down your ideal business goals also assists in providing you with an accurate budget quote. A successful digital presence requires businesses to be established on several online platforms. This includes having a core website, relevant social media accounts, Google Search Console, and online directories. 

As you explore your needs, consider digital marketing services that will help you achieve your goals. When looking at this part of your business from the perspective of your “road-tripping” target audience, it helps to think of each actual service as a billboard along the highway. You can also look at your efforts as an aircraft flying with a banner advertisement or a digital pop-up ad that appears as you wait and pump gas into your car. The point of any of these is to grab your attention as you travel and learn more about the business being advertised. In the digital world, those ads look more like the following:

• Digital Branding
• Website Design and Development
• eCommerce Platform Development and Management
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Social Media Marketing
• Digital PR
• Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

Digital marketing also requires businesses to engage in regular posting, website updates, search engine optimization, and other creative services. Businesses turn to digital marketing agencies to handle all of these aspects of their online business. It is important to research each agency thoroughly because not all agencies offer a full suite of marketing services.

2) Performance-Based Results

Performance-based results are one of the most important elements to consider when choosing a digital marketing agency. Does the agency provide its clients with promised results?

A reputable agency should gladly share data that demonstrates the effectiveness of its services. Measurable results should be available, including past client ROIs and other analytical data.

Additionally, we realize that most customers gauge whether they want to try a business for the first time through reading testimonials. The best testimonials a business can offer are ones that are real, honest, timely, and detailed. You should expect the same level of quality testimonials from your digital marketing agency. 

3) Clear & Frequent Communication

Regular communication is the key to any professional business partnership. This means choosing a digital marketing partner you don’t need to micromanage. You already don’t have the time to do your own digital marketing, so the digital marketing agency you choose to hire should be a self-starter. 

Regardless of who you initially speak to, the agency you choose should be open, honest, and available to communicate when you have questions or concerns. Having someone available at all times, via email, chat, or phone to put your mind at ease makes a huge difference to our clients. 

Don’t forget to look for answers on the agency’s website to commonly asked questions and issues. This gives you extra padding in your communications and saves everyone time as the answer is (usually) readily available and can be answered quickly (or as fast as you can scroll and click).  

In addition to having a clear point of contact and answers to FAQs, look up whether the agency you’re considering offers additional forms of support through a crafted newsletter, blog, podcast, etc. These tools can offer valuable information, insight, and tips that you can use or learn more about as they’re updated.

4) Creativity

Creativity is at the core of all elements involved in digital marketing. Standing out amongst the competition requires creative thinking and original ideas. This requires an agency that employs a team of natural creative thinkers who are knowledgeable in what can set a business apart.

While creativity is one of the more subjective factors to consider when hiring a digital marketing agency, it’s crucial to determine what’s important to you in this category. 

Are you searching for…?

• Diversity in design
• Scale of deliverables for a given client
• Uniqueness 

5) Flexibility

Digital marketing is an ever-evolving industry. An agency must be flexible and able to adapt as changes occur. Look at the recent developments in AI…That’s changed the landscape for digital marketing agencies around the world. 

An exceptional digital marketing agency will be able to identify emerging trends and adjust campaigns accordingly. This puts your business at the forefront of the latest digital marketing trends.

How do you determine whether an agency has flexibility? Evaluate the conversations they’re having on their blog, podcast, social media, and/or in meetings.

 6) Specialized Team

An innovative and passionate team of marketing specialists is a crucial element in every successful digital marketing agency. A reputable digital marketing agency should employ a team of experts who specialize in each of the elements of effective digital marketing.

The last thing you want is to hire a full-service digital marketing agency that is a one-man show. There is not enough time for them to be a master in every service they offer. 

A full-service marketing agency should have a team, including social media marketers, search engine optimization (SEO) specialists, and skilled account executives. This vast range of skills is essential for effective web marketing.

7) Transparency

Transparency is crucial for all business relationships. It’s the starting point for building trust and rapport between the client (i.e. you) and the agency. 

First, check the agency’s website. A website that seems too good to be true, does not provide enough information, or otherwise seems sketchy is probably not legitimate. 

Then, trustworthy digital marketing agencies should provide prospective customers with complete transparency. This includes honest pricing, easy-to-understand contracts, and customer testimonials. If there is anything that you considered sketchy in your search, ask them about it. Their response will tell you a lot about whether you can trust that agency with your business’s marketing.

Finally, a reputable agency will also be happy to review documents with prospective clients before any commitment is made.

8) Data-Driven Services

How data is measured is often a frequently asked question and rightfully so. It’s incredibly hard to track progress without having any way to do so. Effective digital marketing campaigns require advanced tools, technologies, and skilled professionals. All of these, are not typically available or easily understood by someone unfamiliar with digital marketing.

When searching for a digital marketing agency for your business, you should ask them how they measure data and whether they can track your digital marketing progress in real-time. One way an agency might do this is by offering data and analytical reports to keep their clients abreast of any major changes or trends. 

Furthermore, frequent data tracking is the best way to adjust your campaigns as needed to maximize your budget for optimal success. True professionals should use analytical data to drive decision-making processes that generate results.

You may also ask about tracking your digital marketing progress on your own time with client dashboards. These dashboards will keep you informed about the progress that the agency’s services are providing. An added advantage of having a client dashboard includes quick and easy ways to get in touch with your team should you have any questions.

9) A Strong Focus on Business Revenue

A full-service digital marketing agency is the best way to ensure your web presence reaches its maximum potential. Some agencies focus solely on lead generation, website traffic, or other web goals. While these are important elements of a successful digital marketing campaign, this is not the end goal. The right digital marketing agency will work to plan beyond these initial elements of marketing and focus on the end goal of increased revenue.

Marketing’s purpose is to generate quality leads that turn into sales. 

That starts by improving your brand image and building a greater reach into your target audience. 

Beyond that, marketing needs to funnel leads so that your company can see a significant increase in conversions.

NOTE: Marketing is not sales, so you must have an effective sales process to close the quality leads your marketing efforts provide. 

10) Attractive Web Presence

Finally, evaluate the strength and reach of any prospective digital marketing agency’s web presence. A reputable company should appear highly on search engine results pages and regularly post on social media. They should not fall under “the cobbler’s kid goes shoeless”. 

You want to choose an agency that has invested in and successfully established its own digital presence before hiring them to handle yours. There are several reasons for this:

• Their website is the cornerstone of their entire marketing. 
• Agencies should use their website as their personal portfolio.
• They are most likely testing different marketing strategies before trying them out with your brand.
• If they can’t generate leads through their website, how will they be able to generate leads for you? 
• Their ability to invest in their marketing indicates their willingness to invest in other areas of their business (i.e. technology, personnel, continuing education, etc.).

Exults is a full-service digital marketing agency that provides our clients with a range of results-driven services. Explore our services below:

• Website Design
• Website Development
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Sponsored Search
• Social Media Marketing
• E-Commerce Development
• Digital PR

4 Questions To Ask When Hiring A Digital Agency

Wondering how to choose a digital marketing agency? Ask these questions when interviewing agencies. 

How Does Your Digital Agency Track Metrics? 

Every digital agency should hold itself accountable for the leads they are generating for businesses. However, that is not always the case. So ask how and what metrics they track. You may also want to find out if they will provide those metrics to you so you can hold them accountable. 

How Do You Adjust When Things Aren’t Going The Way We Want It To? 

Leading into our second question, the data may show that things aren’t going the way they should’ve gone. Although marketing does require a level of testing and experimentation, it should also have an iterative process. The most important thing is to search for in an agency is someone who will be transparent and proactively provide the next steps to circumvent a negative trend. 

What Involvement Do You Need From Me As The Client?

Depending on what your digital agency proposes, your involvement may vary. When you ask this question, you also need to communicate if you can be involved at any level. 

When Will I See The Results? 

This is a great question because it sets expectations for both parties – the client and the agency. 

The agency will be able to see how quickly you’re expecting leads. That may impact their recommendations. For example, if you want leads yesterday, they may offer paid ads instead of SEO (which can take a couple of months to produce meaningful results). 

The client, on the other hand, will be able to set their personal expectations so they aren’t hounding you for results.

6 Factors To Consider When Choosing A Digital Marketing Agency

Beyond what to look for in a digital marketing agency and questions to ask when hiring a digital agency, you also need to consider the following factors:

• Experience
• Expertise
• Communication
• Budget
• Reputation 
• Business model 

1. Experience

Based on what you’re trying to accomplish, you need to know that the digital agency you’re considering has the experience to take you where you want. For example, if you want a digital agency to create an omnichannel marketing strategy that includes SEO, public relations, social media, billboards, and paid ads, you don’t want a green agency that has experience in only one or two categories. 

Take inventory of what experience you require from an agency.

Then evaluate their work – either through clients listed on their website, case studies provided on their website, or even blogs outlining what they’ve done for themselves. 

2. Expertise

Paired with experience, the next factor to consider when hiring a digital agency is expertise. Your agency needs to be able to know how, when, and what they need to do in the specific marketing strategy they’ve pitched you on. 

As your prospective agency about the team members that will be assigned to your business. What are they skilled in? Why should you trust them with your business?

3. Communication 

This is a big one. Communication can either be the key to a successful partnership or the demise of one. While you may not be able to get a good read in the sales conversations alone, there are a couple of things to look at: 

• Responsiveness via phone, email, and/or text
• Do they answer your questions (or skirt around them)? 
• Welcoming messages to get you excited about partnering together
• Recap emails from meetings or conversations
• Follow-through on action tasks

4. Budget 

Do you have those narrowed digital marketing goals in mind? You need to know if your budget aligns with the agency you’re evaluating and what services you’re requesting. Some agencies have minimum monthly retainers. Others have no floor or ceiling for monthly budget requirements. 

5. Reputation

Another factor to consider when hiring a digital marketing agency is its reputation. What do clients say about them on Google or social media? What do employees say about them on sites like Glassdoor? 

When evaluating reviews, here are a couple of things to consider:

• Recency. Throughout the lifetime of a business, there may be rougher seasons. That may not tell the current picture though. So it’s imperative that you look at the most recent reviews to see what people are experiencing right now. 
• Detail. Evaluate the level of detail a reviewer is providing. Too much detail may be as much of a red flag as too little detail. If you’re unsure about the legitimacy of the testimonial, check out the reviewer’s other comments. 
• Response. There will always be bad reviews. But what matters is how the company responds to those reviews. Are they being gracious, understanding, and proactive? Or are they blaming the reviewer and leaving a bad taste in your mouth? 
• Your Gut. As always, take a gut check when evaluating the agency’s reputation. If something feels slimy, you may be avoiding a potential disaster of an agency relationship.

When searching online, be sure that the digital agency you’re looking into has testimonials readily available on the marketing agency’s core website. You can also search online for reviews from previous clients. You should also pay attention to any agency-given responses to customer complaints or praises. However an agency chooses to respond to their customers online can say more than you may think about their daily operations.

6. Business Model

Depending on the agency and your personal preferences, one type of agency may be better than another. 

First, there’s a more boutique approach where every strategy is designed around the client. Because of their uniqueness, they may take on fewer clients. There may also be a little more experimentation here, but the results could take you into the stratosphere. 

Then there is the other approach where the agency has a proven formula for marketing success. While there may be a little less customization and flexibility here, it’s no less effective. And you’ll see amazing and more importantly, consistent results!

Determine what style and results you’re looking for and keep that in mind when choosing a digital marketing agency to hire. 

Expand The Power Of Your Digital Marketing Strategies With Exults

There’s far more to a successful digital marketing campaign than meets the eye. Where you see social media posts, we see a number of clicks, copy that converts, and eye-catching images. When you’re browsing through blogs, we see relevant and real content with custom copy optimized for the right audience. And where you see your website as it is, we see a ton of measurable results that change daily.

If it sounds like a lot to be responsible for, you’d be right. This is why we partner with businesses and entrepreneurs like yourself to help you stand out among your competitors, promote your brand and voice, and give you access to higher-quality leads.

Are you ready to elevate your customer journey with digital marketing solutions?

Contact Exults Digital Marketing today if you are interested in rebranding your company for the digital business world to spark meaningful engagement and online sales. Visit the Exults website or call 866-999-4736 for more information.

The post The Most Important Things You Should Consider When Hiring a Digital Agency appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

The holiday season may look different this year, but it remains one of the busiest times for consumers and businesses alike. Small businesses and major retailers are doing everything they can to bring in sales despite the new challenges 2020 has presented, including utilizing holiday social media trends. With a shift to e-commerce and digital marketing, having a strong social media presence is key for any business to have a successful holiday season and new year.

With so many different platforms at our fingertips, it can be difficult to know where to begin outlining your social media strategy. Luckily, the social media experts at Exults are here to help identify holiday trends, what’s doing well this year, and what’s likely to continue seeing growth. 

Here are some holiday social media trends your company can take advantage of this season:

Start Making Video Content

Video content has been increasing in popularity for years, and 2020 proved a big year for platforms like TikTok and YouTube. Because of this, brands have begun to embrace video content more than ever. If your company hasn’t delved into this category yet, the holiday season is the perfect time to do so. 

Video is a compelling and visual way to get your messaging across and expand your following. The important thing about creating videos is to avoid being too salesy. Content like this should be about providing value and entertainment. Once you’ve got your audience’s attention, reach and sales will follow.

There are plenty of platforms for creating and sharing videos. TikTok and Instagram Stories have become must-haves over the past year or so, but YouTube is a staple in this category, particularly when it comes to long-form content. 

Which platform will work for you depends on where your audience is most likely to be and the kind of message you’re hoping to get across. For the holiday season, you can use videos to promote any sales and deals you’re having, as well as to spread cheer and talk about how you’re celebrating.

Promote the Act of Giving Back

The holiday season is all about giving, and charities could certainly use the extra hand this year. With so many struggling this holiday season, your brand can pitch in to help. This can take many forms — from hosting a toy or food drive to collecting donations for the charity of your choice. Whatever cause your company chooses to focus on, promoting on social channels is a good idea.

First, highlighting what you’re doing to help your community will endear people to your business. It never hurts to be associated with goodwill, especially as people look for local businesses to support. In fact, a recent study from Zeno demonstrates that consumers are more likely to shop at companies with “purpose.”

Promoting what you’re doing on socials will also enable you to involve your customers in the process. Not only will they get to know your brand by participating, but collecting toys or food might bring them into your store. It’s a win-win situation.

Show Your Staff Some Love

Donating to charity isn’t the only way to show appreciation this year. Another way to spread the love this holiday season is by highlighting how much you appreciate your staff. Presenting a united front to customers is always important, and that’s especially true after this year.

Post a status update, story, or video thanking those who have continued to show up for your business all year. If you plan on hosting some kind of holiday party to thank your staff (virtual gatherings work too), you can also take a picture and share that to social media. It will show your customers you have your priorities straight, and it will make them feel involved.

 Get Festive on Your Stories

We could all use some extra cheer this year, so don’t be afraid to get festive with social media stories. With many consumers having a quieter holiday season in 2020, your followers are bound to appreciate any festivity that comes their way. Instagram’s story feature is probably the most popular, but Facebook and Twitter also enable brands to share stories.

As for what to share in your social stories, your company can and should mix it up. If you’re running promotions or deals, your customers will no doubt want to hear about it. The same goes for any charitable events you’re hosting or supporting. 

It also can’t hurt to show your followers how you’re celebrating the holidays. Posting your store’s decorations or any festive projects you’re doing at home will give your feeds a personalized feel. Personalization often strengthens customer loyalty. Your customers will get to know you better through your stories and feel like they’re celebrating the holidays alongside you.

Even just wishing your followers “Happy Holidays” or “Happy New Year” on your stories can go a long way. You want your customers to feel the warmth and positivity often associated with this time of year. If your brand can give them those feelings by taking advantage of holiday social media trends, they’re more likely to return!

The post Holiday Social Media Trends: The Best Strategies for Improving Your Social Media Presence appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

Rebranding doesn’t have to be a daunting task for your business. Even something as simple as a digital logo redesign can overhaul your company’s identity and completely reshape the impressions made on both your potential and existing customers. 

It is important to recognize that as businesses continue to thrive and expand into online channels such as eCommerce, classic branding that may have worked effectively years ago communicates a more “tired” message to the modern consumer. Businesses with loyal or elderly audiences may benefit from this familiarity, but for those seeking to remain active and involved with younger target markets, a digital logo redesign is necessary for crafting a stronger brand identity.

Recently, many companies have found that adapting and updating their logo can better position their brand for present and future endeavors, such as expanding into new categories. The challenge digital branding for logo imprint imposes is that icons need to be able to stand alone to concisely represent a brand, whereas in the past logos had a luxury of space.  

This remains especially true for social media platforms given the high degree of layout variance across different desktop and mobile sites. For instance, Instagram cuts off content that exceeds a certain size threshold. This means having a logo that is reasonably sized and easily replicable is crucial for consistent digital branding.

What’s in a great logo? Put simply, it has to illustrate the best parts of your business in a clear and concise manner. Impressions happen easily, but are just as easily forgotten if the brand fails to resonate with its intended audience early on and consistently into the future.

At Exults, we could write entire volumes about this subject, but a picture’s worth a thousand words when discussing visuals. With that in mind, here are five companies in recent years that each pulled off a digital logo redesign using unique approaches towards their rebrand:

Mozilla

When organizations begin a rebranding process, they often keep development of new branding materials away from the public view, sometimes for over a year or even longer. Mozilla took the complete opposite approach when redesigning their logo, opting to share each stage of the development process with their audience in order to generate constructive feedback.

This resulted in one of the most strikingly creative logo redesigns a major company has undergone in recent years. Not only did this build public interest in the rebranding process itself, but it also emphasized Mozilla’s commitment to Internet services that prioritize user experience. 

The Firefox provider cleverly working part of the hypertext transfer protocol secure element of a URL into its name (i.e. https://) helps it stand out among other technology companies. It also remains one of the rare modern logos that succeeds without the use of color. 

Slack

Slack’s original logo materialized before the launch of the company itself. While it illustrated the fun atmosphere the brand intended to bring to internal business communications, it also was incredibly difficult to reproduce across platforms. The hashtag/pound symbol used 11 different colors and required rotation at precisely 18 degrees to remain consistent with the original logo.

For a brand that prioritizes cohesion, this inability to apply consistency when implementing the logo elsewhere presented a big problem. To correct this, Slack adopted a logo with simpler colors, sharper text, and a more easily replicable symbol that still invoked familiarity with the original branding.

Now, rather than having to constantly adjust shades and angles when developing content and materials, Slack has an identity that brings excitement and simplicity to its potential audience and existing users.

Android

Making adjustments to a massive corporate brand never comes easily, but this is especially true when the consumer base consists of roughly 2.5 billion active devices around the world. 

Last year, when Google opted to give Android’s branding a facelift for the first time in over half a decade, they sought to achieve many of the same goals as Slack did above. But how does a company improve on branding that has already worked so effectively for so many years in the modern era?

Seeking simple replication without sacrificing resonance, Google opted to keep the bugdroid mascot but stripped away its entire body in favor of retaining the head. Additionally, they updated the color pallet to a more distinctive tint of green while also making their name more legible by changing the font and color. With these two crucial elements now optimized for reproduction across multiple mediums, Google decided to make the “Android” name a permanent fixture alongside the logo, dramatically improving brand consistency. 

Popeye’s

Popeyes had a wild end to 2019, sparking a chicken sandwich war in the fast food industry after their highly-anticipated offering sold out nationally within days. Entering 2020, the company had to drastically adjust to the sudden windfall of customers, and this included the need for a rebrand to keep up with the times.

Not much required change, but again, the need for easy replication while retaining familiarity was clear. As such, Popeye’s stripped their color palette down to one hue of orange, placed a chicken prominently in the center of their logo, and kept a similar font for their name while straightening it out for legibility purposes. In addition, they kept the “Louisiana Kitchen” phrase while removing the redundant fleur-de-lis in favor of the company’s founding year.

Popeye’s will likely claim one of the most successful digital logo redesigns of 2020. The company has clearly had no problems reproducing its new branding across online marketing or its packaging materials, as evidenced by the company’s rapidly rising same-store sales quarter over quarter.

Mall of America

Mall of America’s rebrand represents perhaps the most dramatic change out of those on this list. At a glance, it stands in stark contrast to the one taken by Slack given the abundance of color in the current logo. 

Though Mall of America’s previous identity above displays in black and white, it’s important to note that the traditional branding utilized a red, white and blue format consistent with the American flag. While this worked well in the early years of the mall’s inception during the ‘90s, it left the brand feeling tired by the time the mall hit its 20th anniversary.

As diversity became an increasingly important component of American culture during the 2010 decade, Mall of America sought to create a logo that represented this shift while retaining its distinct American identity. By retaining the star at the center but giving it a profound facelift with respect to color, Mall of America firmly illustrated its place as the intersection of “fashion, entertainment, cuisine, thrills, and community” to local Minnesotans and audiences across the United States.

Eight years later, it remains an extremely effective example of how prioritizing intricacy over simplicity can actually improve a company’s image.

What a Digital Logo Redesign Can Do for Your Company

What do all of these rebranding efforts have in common? They all sought to implicitly reposition the ways in which new and existing customers interact with a company’s brand. Though the approaches vary across industries, the goals remain the same, and the success remains consistent.

Whether subtle changes for replication purposes or dramatic transformations to completely overhaul identity, a digital logo redesign can positively reshape your company’s perception among your target audience. In doing so, you’ll ensure that your branding remains both consistent and dynamic for keeping up with the ever-changing trends of the modern business world.

At Exults, we already offer effective digital marketing solutions ranging from web design to social media management, and so our understanding of what goes into great digital branding comes built-in. Rest assured that as an agency with a full suite of Internet marketing services, we can help you craft a new brand identity that thrives across the digital landscape.

If you’re interested in seeing what Exults can do for your company and its brand, give us a call at 866-999-4736 or request a quote today.

The post Five Great Digital Logo Redesigns, and Why Your Business Should Get One appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

If your business doesn’t have a handle on brand management yet, now is the ideal time to start. Learn the basics of brand management and find out how it can keep your business ahead of the game.

What Brand Management Involves

Brand management essentially involves manipulating each aspect of your business’s branding to create a cohesive personality. Brand management ensures that all aspects unite to enhance brand identity. This means creating a cohesive experience for each user using an undivided theme of tangible and intangible elements:

• Logo
• Website design
• Associated Colors
• Marketing
• Advertising
• Placement
• Distribution

How Brand Management Impacts Customer Perception

One of the most important parts of brand management is understanding how customers perceive your company’s brand. No matter what type of brand identity you want to convey, you’ll need to know where it stands in the market and whether customers are making the desired connection with your products and services. As you develop a strong brand identity, you can also enhance customer trust.

How Brand Management Affects Value

Strong brand identity and positive brand perception can build the brand equity, or value, of your company’s products and services. Basically, the brand equity is generated by making products and services memorable, recognizable and a valuable investment. By creating a cohesive brand experience and trust, you have the potential to boost your bottom line substantially because you have a trusted brand personality that people can form loyalties to.

Why Is Personal Brand So Important for Your Company?

Historically, branding was only for businesses. Not so, today, when your personal brand speaks volumes about you and your expertise. From skills to experience, your brand tells prospective clients who you are and allows you to build the bridges to long term business relationships.

It doesn’t matter if you are the sole member of the business or if you are a valued team member, personal branding speaks volumes in today’s world. Why? Surveys continue to indicate the ever-increasing use of social media by potential employers regarding job candidates, current employers checking on the activities of their team members, and prospective and existing customers verifying the trustworthiness of you and your company.

So ask yourself, is your personal brand making a good impression for you and your company? Is it consistent?

Developing Your Personal Brand to Work Effectively for You and Your Company

Developing an effective and strong personal brand is good for your career and good for business. You represent your company everywhere you go – from events to conferences – and every place in between. Your personal brand means greater exposure for you and your company.

The personal brand you promote for all to see works to gain new customers as well as retain current customers. Your personal brand builds trust between you and your customers in addition to you and your employees. It allows you to communicate who you are, what you stand for, and your personal mission. Without it, you take the chance of losing customers as well as opportunities to accomplish your goals.

Building your personal brand requires focus, diligence, and consistency. Hiring an experienced digital marketing agency can take care of all your business’s personal brand needs. With experts in custom web development, search engine marketing, SEO, and social media marketing, Exults can help you surpass marketing goals.

Personal brand development requires you to claim your online presence, and build on it, positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Personal branding means making connections in the industry, answering questions from potential customers, posting frequently, and sharing your expertise across all the channels available to you – posts, tweets, stories, live feeds, and more.

Personal branding doesn’t happen overnight. It requires continual development of your brand, genuine, authentic crafting which sets you apart, what makes you unique and in turn, what sets your company apart from the competition.

Personal branding allows you to show your unique value – ability, interest, connections, experience, and skills – building not only your visibility but helping you know yourself and achieve your goals. Plus, a solid personal brand works toward your personal growth and advancement while creating increased exposure for your company.

How to Build a Strong Brand Identity for Your Company

Emotions make our decisions. 95% of purchasing decisions are decided by our subconscious mind. So why focus entirely on the concrete benefits our companies offer when it’s the intangible things that push sales? This is the power of creating a brand identity.

In every market, there is a leading brand. They have competitors with nearly identical products or services. Still, more customers will pay up to 8x’s more for the brand they trust.

How can you establish a company brand that will let you demand more for the value you give? Here is a brief primer for corporate brand design.

Define Your Brand Identity

Before you create any logos or make any decisions on what you look like or sound like, you must define who you are.

Audience

Your audience will shape your brand. Who are they? Who are they not? The more targeted and clear you are, the stronger your brand will be.

Goals

What are your company’s biggest goals? Your brand will be a tool to help you grow. Define how you want to grow. Think about the emotional benefits you are selling. Is it trust, security, novelty, simplicity? Decide on what psychological triggers you want to hone in on and how they will help you meet your goal.

Brand Persona

Create a Brand Persona. This is a collection of values, personality traits and attitudes your brand would have if it were a person.

Key Messages

Establish your Key Messages. These messages are the main things your audience should take away from everything you put out into the world.

Positioning

To stand apart from the competition, you need to make it clear why you are different. The factors that will position your brand are:

• Who do you serve?
• Why are you different?
• What is the brand story?
• What is the brand promise?
• What are your unique selling propositions?

You must spell out why you are the better option.

“People don’t buy the what; they buy the why.” – Simon Sinek

Now that you’ve established what your brand will be, it’s time to put the pieces together.

Brand Voice

Your brand voice is the tone of voice and language you use. It needs to be Authentic and true to your company values. Remember that you are using this voice to build relationships.

Fonts

Choose fonts that will be used across all your marketing. This serves to establish consistency. Usually, a header font and a body font are enough.

Visual Branding

Now we get to the stuff many people think about when we say “branding”. It’s the stuff you see.

How would you describe the Nike logo? If you said “swoosh”, what is that anyway? It’s Nike. A swoosh exists no place else. That brings us to the logo.

Logo

A great Logo will be distinct, memorable, scalable, and easy to apply across different mediums.
Imagery

You also must decide what type of images to use. They must show your type of customer and express the attitudes of your brand persona.

Colors

Lastly, pick your colors. 85% of shoppers say that color is the main reason why they buy a product. What can colors express? A lot. Here are just a few examples of how you can use color with your brand.

• Red: defiance, power
• Blue: intelligence, calmness
• Yellow: optimism, creativity
• Green: harmony, truth
• Orange: warmth, abundance
• Black: sophistication, glamour
• White: clarity, efficiency
• Brown: reliability, security

When you manage your brand’s visual identity you will create trust and familiarity over time. Apply these elements to every touch point people have with your brand and you will steadily build a strong brand image.

How to Monitor Your Brand’s Online Reputation

Consumers are relying more than ever on online reviews, product write-ups, and star ratings from their peers. That’s why it’s crucial that you’re constantly monitoring your brand’s reputation online, good or bad.

If the customer was happy, make sure you show them you appreciate the kind words by engaging with the post. This goes a long way with instilling brand loyalty, and showing consumers that you’re grateful for their business.

If the customer was not happy, it’s a little trickier. It’s vital that you publicly acknowledge the customer’s concerns, and try to move the discussion to a private channel like email or direct message. This shows potential buyers that you care about your customers and that you’re open to negative feedback. By taking the conversation to a private channel, you avoid publicly revealing a potentially messy situation or revealing what you’re willing to do for an unhappy customer (ex: deep discount, refund, free product, etc).

That’s all well and good, but…

How do I monitor my brand’s online reputation?

There’s no shortage of paid tools you can use to stay on top of your brand’s online chatter (more on that later), but the majority of you reading this can get away with utilizing a few free tools that you might already be familiar with.

1) Google search

The first place you should check is the Google search results because it’ll give you the best overall view of your online sentiment. For instance, here’s a random search for a popular diner in San Francisco…

That’s just Page 1 of the search results, and you can already see the plethora of places where potential customers are forming an opinion about you. Keep clicking to Page 2, 3, and 4 to perform a thorough search.

You shouldn’t just stop at searching your brand name, though. Make sure to also search…

• Common misspellings
• Nicknames
• Social handles
• Related searches
• Autocompleted searches

Here are examples of the latter two:

Related Search (found on the bottom of the search results page)

Autocomplete searches

These types of searches not only give you an overview of your online reputation, they also unveil possible issues or discussions about your brand that you might not have known about.

PS: If you’re unhappy with what you see on Google, don’t hesitate to contact us about our SEO services.

2) Google Alerts

This is a free tool provided by Google, that allows you to set up alerts that notify you whenever your business name pops up on the search engine. This is valuable because it allows you to react quickly to online feedback about your brand.

To set it up, head to google.com/alerts and hit “Create Alert”. It’s pretty straightforward.
Make sure to be thorough when you create alerts for your brand name. Again, don’t forget about common misspellings, nicknames, old names, shortened names, etc.

When you click on the pencil icon, you’ll have these options…

Side note: you can use Google Alerts for all kinds of searches, including the names of your main competitors. This allows you to spy on your competition without them knowing.

3) Yelp, Google Reviews, Facebook Reviews, Tripadvisor, etc

Over 90% of consumers are using online reviews to make a purchasing decision. Star ratings are the top factor that consumers consider when deciding to buy (stats courtesy of Vendasta).

You NEED to be monitoring the obvious sites like Yelp, Google, Facebook, and industry-specific review websites. You NEED to be engaging with these reviews to show that you’re listening.

You can do this manually or you can use a paid tool (a quick Google search will give you plenty of options for paid tools). Just make sure you’re doing it.

Again, when you’re responding to negative feedback, MAKE SURE to acknowledge the problem publicly, but try to provide a solution privately.

Check out why customer reviews are important?.

4) Social listening

It goes without saying, you need to respond to people on social media when they message you directly. If you’re not responding to users on social media, it’s like you’re not answering the phone when someone calls your business.

That’s not enough, though.

You also need to be paying close attention to conversations about your brand on social media, where you aren’t directly tagged or mentioned. This is a lot easier than it sounds.

Here’s an example of social listening on Twitter…

You should be engaging with those tweets, even though they didn’t mention you directly or use your hashtag.

Here’s an example of social listening on Instagram, searching Places…

These screenshotted results are people that checked into the nursery but maybe didn’t tag the nursery’s Instagram profile. You’ll want to engage with these posts from your business’ Instagram handle.

Make sure to go through all your active social media accounts, and perform searches related to your brand name to uncover these kinds of results.

5) Paid tools

As previously mentioned, there’s no shortage of paid tools out there. They range from very affordable to very pricey. Here’s just a few of the more prominent options:

• Brand24
• Hootsuite
• Yext
• Mention
• BrandWatch
• BrandYourself
• ReviewPush
• Moz Local

If you’re open to paying for a tool, make sure to do your research because there’s a wide array of prices and functionality to consider.

Managing Your Brand Reputation Online

Despite the cliche, not all press is good press. This is especially true when the bad press becomes the first impression for a potential customer, i.e. when the bad press lands on the first page of a Google search for your business.

For example: BP’s catastrophic oil spill was really (really really really) bad press. For a while, and maybe even still, people associated BP with oil spills — not good, obviously. When you searched Google for “BP gas,” articles about the oil spill would dominate the search results, which obviously doesn’t help the brand’s image. BP needed a major PR push to change the conversation. 

“If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.” – Don Draper, Mad Men

BP decided to change the conversation and began to flood the internet with positive stories. This included a lot stories about their environmental efforts and community work.

Now when you Google “BP gas,” the oil spill gets buried (with the exception of that terrible Marky Mark movie Deepwater Horizon that re-surfaced the oil spill conversation). Now people associate BP less with the oil spill than they did 5 years ago.

More on how BP cleaned up their Google results later (keep scrolling)

Don’t underestimate the power of your Google search results. Many times, people will form an opinion about your business based on what they find on Google, fair or unfair. 

So, how do ensure that positive stories overpower the negative ones on your Google search results…

Step 1: Do good

How can you create a positive story about the work your company did in the community if you didn’t actually do good work in the community? Find an initiative that you want to support, and actually do it.

Step 2: Make sure people know you did something good

While it’s intrinsically worthwhile for you to get involved with good causes, it doesn’t help your online image if there isn’t any written proof of what you did.

When your company does something good, make sure you write about it. Don’t stop there though — make sure someone else writes about it. Make sure people read it and share it. Make sure it’s optimized for the search engines. Make sure the story not only lives your website, but on other relevant websites as well. Rinse and repeat.

Another tactic: optimize your off-site channels

A lot of times, your Facebook page, LinkedIn Company page, Yelp page, TripAdvisor profile, etc. will show up on the first page of search results. There’s only so many slots on the first page of Google search results, so these kinds of off-site channels (assuming they’re not littered with negative reviews) will help bury your negative search results.

Use a site like Namechk to ensure that you’ve secured your company name on all major off-site channels.

Back to BP… how did BP bury their negative search results?

This is what shows up (and why) when you search common brand searches for BP.

When you search “BP gas”…

Their website surfaces at the top of search results in almost every brand related search. This is a benefit of great website SEO work. You want your website to show up first– it’s an online channel that you have full control over.

The local search results are important because they take over most of the first page for this particular search. This is a benefit to great local SEO– making sure your brand’s geo-specific locations show up during relevant searches. I performed that search from Fort Lauderdale, and lo-and-behold, all the nearest BP gas stations in the area showed up.

When you search “BP gasoline”, this is what populates…

Notice the top result is a BP-controlled microsite. This microsite was created to educate consumers about the perks of BP gas. It also helps bury search results that BP doesn’t control.

The spill happened in 2010, this microsite was built in 2011. Coincidence? I think not.

When you search “British Petroleum”…

Notice the first result is a Google Ad. Notice the second result is their official website. Why “waste” money by bidding on your own name, you ask?

It’s all about controlling what you can control on Google search. BP didn’t want another company to poach that top slot, so they took it.

You see the same ad when you search “BP oil”. 

When you search just “BP,” this box pops up in the right column…

You don’t just control your own websites. You also control things like your social media profiles, which usually populate the first page of results.

Also, notice their stock price is shown. This is just another example of content that can help bury negative search results.

On the same search, you’ll also see their international sites and their Wikipedia page…

If you’re an international company, you need to treat your international sites with the same level of SEO that you would your US site. Why? Because they can be easy ways to fill out the first page of search results.

If you’re big enough to have your own Wikipedia page, make sure the information is up-to-date and accurate. You don’t want an internet troll to input fake information on your Wikipedia page– people look at Wikipedia pages as fact (for better or worse).

Summary

BP did a lot of things to improve their image on Google. There’s not a single pill you can take to fix negative search results, so you need to try a few tactics to see which ones stick. BP did, and it seems to be paying dividends for them.

Exults Drives Results

Your personal brand is key in today’s global business environment. Personal branding is crucial and requires a fully focused and continuous commitment. At Exults, we are ready to help you develop your personal brand and make the connections your company needs to succeed. Contact us today and let’s get started!

The post Brand Management: How to Keep Your Business Ahead of the Game appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

In today’s digital landscape, nearly anyone can design and run a website, but not everyone succeeds at making their website truly effective. A website is much more than just pretty pictures and text—it requires strategic planning, well-crafted content, and seamless functionality to stand out from the competition, especially for industries like law firms where professionalism and clarity are paramount.

Ultimately, the success of a website hinges on how user-friendly it is. This guide will walk you through the key elements of a user-friendly website and how to win over your audience with a website homepage that excels in law firm website design and beyond.

What Should Be on the Home Page of a Website?

The homepage is often the first interaction users have with your website, making it the most crucial page to get right. Whether you’re focusing on law firm website design or another industry, your homepage should immediately communicate who you are, what you do, and how users can benefit from your services. Here are the essential components that every website homepage should include:

• Clear Value Proposition: Your homepage should clearly state what your business offers within seconds of landing on your page. This is especially important in law firm website design, where clarity and professionalism are key.

• Easy-to-Find Navigation: The main navigation menu should be intuitive and accessible, guiding users effortlessly to the information they seek. User-friendly website navigation is critical to keeping visitors engaged.

• Engaging Visuals: Use high-quality images and graphics that align with your brand’s message. Avoid clutter, but ensure the page is visually appealing.

• Call to Action (CTA): Encourage users to take the next step with prominent, strategically placed CTAs. This could be scheduling a consultation for a law firm or exploring services.

• Social Proof: Include testimonials, reviews, or client logos to build trust and credibility with new visitors. Social proof is an important element of a good website, particularly in industries that rely on reputation.

5 Important Elements of a User-Friendly Website

Many businesses, including law firms, make the mistake of prioritizing aesthetics or content over usability. However, user-friendly websites prioritize the user experience, making it easy for visitors to find what they need and take action. Below are the elements of a good website that are critical to user-friendly design.

1. Simple Website Navigation

A well-planned and easy-to-navigate website is crucial for user-friendliness. Clear, concise page titles and a logically organized menu bar are essential. Overcrowding the menu or burying important information can frustrate users and increase bounce rates. For law firm website design, it’s important to ensure that key information like practice areas, attorney profiles, and contact information are easy to find.

2. Aesthetic Appeal

While aesthetic appeal isn’t everything, it plays a significant role in user experience. A visually appealing website with professional, high-quality images and a clean layout can enhance usability. Consistent branding across your website strengthens your brand identity and makes your website more recognizable and trustworthy. This is particularly true in law firm website design, where a professional appearance can set the tone for client trust.

3. Responsive / Mobile Compatibility

With the majority of users accessing websites from mobile devices, mobile compatibility is non-negotiable. A responsive website adjusts seamlessly to different screen sizes, ensuring a smooth user experience regardless of the device. Test your site with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to ensure it meets mobile usability standards. Designing user-friendly web design that works well on mobile devices is crucial, especially for industries like law, where clients may be searching for legal services on the go.

4. Simple, Scannable Content

In today’s fast-paced world, users don’t have the time or patience for long blocks of text. Most users skim content, looking for key information. Make your content easy to scan by using clear, bold headings, subheadings, and bullet points. This approach helps users quickly find the information they need, improving the overall user experience. This is a critical aspect of creating a user-friendly website.

5. Quick Loading Time

A slow website can deter visitors and harm your search engine rankings. In fact, if your page takes longer than 6 seconds to load, you risk losing potential customers. Optimize your website’s speed by compressing images, minimizing the use of heavy scripts, and utilizing fast hosting solutions. A faster website not only enhances user experience but also boosts SEO performance. This is a key aspect of user-friendly website design.

Additional Resources for Creating a User-Friendly Website

Creating a user-friendly website involves understanding both your audience and the technical aspects of web design. Below are some additional resources that can help you refine your website:

• Google PageSpeed Insights: Analyze and optimize your website’s speed to ensure a user-friendly experience.

• Mobile-Friendly Test by Google: Ensure your website performs well on mobile devices.

• Yoast SEO: Improve your on-page SEO, making your site more accessible to search engines.

• Hotjar: Gain insights into user behavior on your website to make data-driven improvements.

Indicators of Website Success

Success in web design isn’t just about aesthetics or content; it’s about how well your site performs with its intended audience. Key indicators of a successful, user-friendly website include:

• Low Bounce Rate: Users engage with your content and explore multiple pages.

• High Conversion Rate: Visitors are taking the desired actions, whether it’s scheduling a consultation, filling out a contact form, or subscribing to a newsletter.

• Positive User Feedback: Consistent, positive feedback from users suggests that your website is meeting their needs.

• Search Engine Ranking: A user-friendly website often ranks higher on search engines due to better usability and optimized content.

The Importance of Social Proof

Incorporating social proof into your website design is a powerful way to build credibility. Whether through client testimonials, case studies, or user reviews, showing that others trust your services can significantly influence new visitors. This is especially important in law firm website design, where trust is a crucial factor in converting visitors into clients.

The Benefits of a User-Friendly Website

Investing in a user-friendly website offers numerous benefits:

• Improved User Experience: Easier navigation and faster load times create a more enjoyable experience for your visitors.

• Higher Search Engine Rankings: Search engines favor websites that provide a good user experience, which can boost your rankings.

• Increased Conversions: A well-designed website that’s easy to use encourages more visitors to convert into clients.

• Enhanced Brand Reputation: A professional, user-friendly website strengthens your brand’s reputation, making it more appealing to potential customers.

Looking For Professional Website Design?

If you’re in need of a user-friendly website that stands out in today’s competitive digital landscape, Exults is your go-to partner for internet success. Whether you need a website overhaul or a completely new design, our team has the expertise to take your project from concept to completion.

Ready to Elevate Your Online Presence?

Learn more about our mobile compatibility web design services and how we can help you create a user-friendly website that not only looks great but also drives results. Contact Exults today for a consultation.

The post Key Elements Every User-Friendly Website Should Have appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

In order to gain lead generation, it is imperative to implement customer reviews on your website for multiple reasons.

If you are hungry for more leads, these five reasons will show you exactly how user-generated content can gain you those leads you’ve been craving.

Increases Brand Trust

It is difficult for consumers to make purchases solely on companies’ promises. Customers have ample places to conduct their business, so why should they give you their money over your competitor down the street?

Customers want to be something other than your company’s guinea pig. They want to purchase a product or a service that they know will get them their money’s worth.

So, how do you ensure that customers trust you? You don’t. Previous customers do.

They do this through their online reviews and testimonials. Reviews show that your products or services work and that your promises are real.

Boosts Online Search Rankings

Search engines are all about their algorithms and coding. However, they know how to promote companies with a humane element, aka reviews.

These reviews show search engines that your company is both trustworthy and legitimate. Your company will receive a higher ranking by proving this to search engines.

Differentiate Your Business From Others

Look at this aspect from an outsider’s point of view. If you were going to hire a personal accountant and narrow your search down to two candidates — one has reviews, and one does not. Who are you most likely going to choose?

The one who has reviews because this conveys a higher sense of professionalism and trust. You want to set yourself apart from your competitors in any way, shape, or form, and online reviews are a great way to do so.

Promotes Relevant Content

Google loves content, there is no surprise there. But having a review or testimonial page on your website makes for great content. This relates to getting a higher search ranking on Google.

The more reviews you have, the more content pages you have. And the more content pages you have, the better you rank on Google, which is just waiting to send your company more leads.

Displays A Human Element

Despite all the technical benefits, having online reviews for your company will show that you care about your customers. Authentic reviews allow you to interact with your customers and thank them for their patronage or apologize for their negative experiences.

You can even use these reviews to steer customers back toward your company if their initial experience wasn’t positive by apologizing and offering to fix their problem.

Online Reviews Are Key For Lead Generation

All in all, having online reviews on your website is vital to your company. Not only will it increase lead generation, but it will also allow you to hear your customer’s feedback.

This can help you to yield a better customer experience, which can drive even more customers to your door. Online reviews are a win-win when it comes to your business.

Are you looking for more advice from digital marketing experts? Take a look at our top tips to learn more.

FAQs

Why are customer reviews important for marketing?

Positive reviews can enhance a company’s social credibility and create favorable impressions on potential customers. Positive reviews can instill trust in your business for potential customers, who may feel more at ease making a purchase knowing that others have had positive experiences.

What are the benefits of responding to customer reviews?

When considering buying something, customers are interested in both customer reviews and the perspective of the business. Responding to reviews can help companies handle negative feedback, establish consumer confidence, improve ratings, and boost sales.

How do positive reviews impact a business?

Positive reviews contribute to establishing trust in a business and its merchandise, potentially leading to a higher chance of customer transactions. Research has indicated that customer feedback significantly influences sales conversion rates.

The post Why Are Reviews Important? The Benefits of Customer Feedback appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

It’s no secret that having a mobile-friendly website can increase your conversions and help you skyrocket to the top of search engine results.

The only problem?

You’re not quite sure how to make a website mobile friendly.

Read on to learn how to create a design that works across multiple mobile devices and operating systems.

Then, learn where you can go to find the professional digital marketing help you need to take your desktop and mobile sites to the next level.

Optimize Your Images

While a giant photograph of some of your top-selling products or smiling clients might be eye-catching on a desktop site, oversized images can slow loading speed to a crawl — and seriously mess with the formatting — on a mobile device.

Instead, make sure the images you use on a mobile version of the website are as light as possible. Switch to JavaScript, choose one central image as opposed to a slideshow, and post lower resolution photos.

Don’t forget to crop and study up on the aspect ratio to seriously save on bandwidth and ensure images load quickly and completely.

Stop the Autoplay

We know that video marketing is on the rise, and it’s true that it can be an excellent addition to your overall digital marketing plan.

However, stop to consider if it really belongs on a mobile-friendly website.

Eliminate the autoplay features of a video, and instead allow mobile users to click on a link to be redirected to a video instead.

When it comes to choosing the right mobile video player for a mobile site? We suggest going with an HTML5 player, which is compatible with most mobile devices.

While we’re on the subject of automatic features — skip the pop-ups and automatic redirects to an app store or another site. Not only will it slow things down, but it’s also off-putting to consumers.

Consider Site Design

The final step in learning how to make your website mobile friendly.

Make sure that you’ve optimized your overall site design.

First off, make sure to include follow buttons to your social media profiles, and always ensure your contact information is visible.

When you look at your website, search for things that can be cut. This includes excess plugins, large images, slow-loading graphics, and especially giant walls of text.

Remember that the mobile screen is much smaller than a desktop, so aim to de-clutter your mobile website as much as you can.

Above all, if you include appointment request forms, question and answer forms, or contact forms on your mobile site, ensure they’re mobile friendly.

Otherwise, none of your hard work will pay off!

Need Professional Help Creating a Mobile Friendly Website?

Sometimes, the best way to create a mobile-friendly website is to leave it to the professionals.

That’s where we come in.

We’re a full-service digital marketing agency, which means that we can help you with mobile-friendly design in addition to SEO, social media, and more.

When you’re ready to transform your site and web presence as a whole, reach out to us.

The post Going Mobile: 3 Tips for a Mobile-Friendly Website Design appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

Machine Learning Identifies Higher-Quality Leads

As machine learning tools learn about your customers, they can make a suggestion to attract the right audiences that are likely to convert. This might include creating content for a specific social media channel or suggesting changes to your audience to better connect with their needs. Instead of trying to grow your audience at the expense of quality, machine learning tools grow the quality of the people you need to reach.

Machine Learning Helps Your Customer Service Team

A customer service team’s success depends on its ability to solve problems quickly and accurately. Many websites like Kayak and Trulia use machine learning chatbots to solve customer problems without using human resources on social media channels like Facebook.

When humans do get involved in the customer service process, machine learning can help filter down the problem and suggest solutions to meet the customer’s needs. This increases the quality of solutions provided by your team.

Machine Learning Analyzes the Customer Lifecycle

Acquiring new customers is important, but so is retaining the customers you have and increasing their overall lifetime value. By analyzing customer trends and shopping patterns, machine learning tools can identify the best times to engage with customers and bring them back to your company. This increases sales by growing the number of times customers engage with your brand while limiting the overall number of lost customers.

To learn more about machine learning and how it can benefit your particular business, reach out to the team at Exults. We can help you take your Internet marketing efforts to the next level.

The post Understanding Machine Learning for Marketing appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

In case you can’t remember what the now-old YouTube logo looked like, here’s the old and the new side-by-side…

The new logo puts emphasis on the super recognizable red play icon. Take the words off the logo, and people would still recognize the brand. The red play icon also connects with the colorful Google Play icon, creating cohesiveness across Google-owned properties:

The other big reason for the switch was because the old logo put too much emphasis on “Tube,” which is an old-timey nickname for TV. YouTube has evolved well-beyond traditional “boob tubes” and it doesn’t make sense to associate the brand with old tech.

So, all in favor of the new YouTube logo?

Aye! Aye! Aye! Aye! Aye! Aye! Aye! Aye! Aye! Aye! Aye! Aye! Aye! Ruff! Ruff! (that’s 13 “ayes” from the humans at Exults, and 2 barks from the office dogs)

Other Major Logo Changes

Companies have their reasons for updating their logo. That doesn’t mean that consumers can’t make fun of the change. Exhibit A: AirBnb

AirBnb’s logo update was one of my favorites because of the creative backlash.

Let’s be real… the old AirBnb logo looked like an airbrushed tee in the 90’s. Their new / current logo is clean, modern, simple, and app icon-friendly. That didn’t stop the trolls though.

Here are 2 of my favorite AirBnb logo parodies.

Side note: I couldn’t include most of the logo parodies because they’re very NSFW. You’re smart though– use your imagination. 

Moving on. Twitter’s logo didn’t always feature the blue bird. It had a lot of that “bad graffiti” /  “gas station hat” quality that the original AirBnb logo had.

We don’t even need to discuss why Adidas had to change their original logo (yikes).

Remember when Uber’s biggest issue wasn’t sexual harassment or a trending hashtag (#DeleteUber)– it was users complaining about their new logo.

It’s ironic that the company most associated with sleek design, Apple, used to have this as their logo.

Nokia’s original logo could work today… if they were a hipster seafood restaurant.

I don’t care if it was only $1, Proctor & Gamble most definitely overpaid for this logo in the 1800’s.

The Exults Logo Change

Even Exults had a different logo. Over a decade ago (yes, we’re celebrating our 10th year in Fort Lauderdale!), this was the company logo:

If it wasn’t already evident, our logo change was also a company name change. The reason for the change was that we became so much more than just an SEO company. We began specializing in PPC, social media, and e-commerce. The old company name and logo was too one-dimensional.

Wrapping up

I encourage you to scour the web for old company logos– it’s a blast. I only included a few of our favorites on this post, but when you get a chance (or don’t feel like working) take a look at the original logos for Mozilla, Microsoft, Starbucks, IBM, McDonald’s, Burger King, Shell, Ford, Pepsi, and Instagram.

What are your favorite logo changes? Need help with your branding? Don’t hesitate to reach out. 

The post Brand Refresh: YouTube’s Logo Update appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

If you’re 30 or younger, you probably never shopped at a Sears. And if you fall in that category, you’d probably be shocked to hear that Sears was America’s largest retail company in the late 80’s.

It’s true– just ask your parents about their experience with Sears and their face will light up as they reminisce about their first fridge or dryer.

Since their heydays though, they’ve been on a steady (and more recently, rapid) decline. The reason… they were too slow to implement an e-commerce strategy.

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”
-JFK

One of Sears’ most popular product lines is their Kenmore kitchen appliances. Recently, they started selling their Kenmore products on Amazon as a last ditch effort to make some extra revenue (Forbes mag writes about here). Their shares soared after the move.

Cup your ear, and you can probably hear the shareholders collectively yelling “ABOUT DAMN TIME!”

While it’s a good move considering their circumstance, it begs the question…

Is it too little, too late?

The truth is, Sears had the resources and the mountain of cash to be an e-commerce leader when stores began selling online in the late 90’s and early 00’s. They didn’t adapt, while their target customer did. This happened to Macy’s also. 

Amazon is burying them today. Walmart is too. My prediction: Sears won’t ever be able to recover. They’ve lost too much ground. Their recent move to sell Kenmore on Amazon is them just treading water.

Don’t be like today’s Sears

When you’re growing your business, you should focus on an online-first strategy. That means, you have to act as of the vast majority of your interactions with the customer will happen online. Optimize your website, social media profiles, and paid channels to convert customers online.

Maybe that conversion is a phone call that leads to a purchase. Maybe that conversion is an actual online purchase. Regardless, act like you’re an online business, even if traditionally, you’re not (ex: a pizza place, a car wash, a law firm, etc).

It’s not just about the lowest price

Amazon tends to have low prices, but many times, it doesn’t have the lowest prices. So why does Amazon dominate?

Convenience!

We shop on Amazon because we know we’ll get a decent price, and more importantly, reliable 2-day shipping (sometimes 1-hour shipping!)… for free.

There’s a grocery store less than a mile from my house, but I’ll STILL order chia seeds from Amazon because it’s equally as convenient.

What can your business do?

Make sure you have an SEO-friendly website that allows you to conduct business online. If you’re a pizza place, make sure you can take orders online. If you sell skincare products, make sure your e-commerce store is clean, fast, and easy to navigate.

A focal point to your online business NEEDS to be convenience.

• Consumers want to be able to order pizza online
• Consumers want free or at least affordable shipping
• Consumers might want to pick up in store

Oh yeah, and make sure your prices are fair (duh) and it might not hurt to also sell on Amazon.

Let us help you out with optimizing your e-commerce store. Reach out by visiting our contact page or calling 866-999-4736.

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